Regions of Slovenia

Updates:

I have added population data for 2011. Slovenia uses population registers to produce quarterly population reports. The report for the
first quarter of 2011 is designated as the decennial census and complies with European Union directives.

There have been discussions for several years about reorganizing Slovenia into pokrajine (provinces). Under one proposal, the provinces
would be the same as the current statistical regions, except that some names would be moderately changed and Savinjska statistical region
would be split into Savinjska and Savinjsko-aleka pokrajine. (See also source [8].)

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Number I-4 is dated 2002-12-10. It replaces the division of Slovenia into twelve statistical regions with a
division into 193 municipalities. I have them listed as secondary subdivisions.

There are various ways of partitioning Slovenia. The basic building blocks seem to be the opčine (communes, or municipalities). There
were 62 of them in 1991; 147 after a reorganization on 1994-10-04; and 192 after a referendum on 1998-08-07. There are 58 upravne enote
(administrative units), which are almost all made up of one or more entire communes. There are other subdivisions called okrajna
sodišča, okrožna sodišča, and višja sodišča. The Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia has
defined twelve statistična regije (statistical regions). It remains to be seen which, if any, of these systems becomes established as
a standard for Slovenia.

Erratum: In "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries", the statistical regions were incorrectly identified as administrative areas.

International standard ISO 3166-2 was published on December 15, 1998. It superseded ISO/DIS 3166-2 (draft international standard).
For Slovenia, the draft standard showed no subdivisions. The final standard showed the twelve statistical regions. These regions and
their codes are shown in the first table below. FIPS PUB 10-4 originally listed no subdivisions of Slovenia. Change 1, dated December
1, 1998, lists the 147 communes that existed before the 1998 referendum. They are shown on the Communes of Slovenia
page.

Country overview:

Short name

SLOVENIA

ISO code

SI

FIPS code

SI

Language

Slovenian (sl)

Time zone

+1~

Capital

Ljubljana

Before World War I, Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It consisted of Carniola and parts of Carinthia, Coastland, and
Styria provinces of Austria, as well as small parts of Vasvár and Zala counties of Hungary. In the aftermath of World War I, this area
was divided between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) and Italy. The border between Italy and Yugoslavia
wasn't settled until 1924. In the settlement, Italy received Istria. Yugoslavia was occupied by the axis powers in World War II. After
the war, Istria was joined to Yugoslavia. Part of it went to Croatia; the rest eventually became Južna Primorska and Severna
Primorska in Slovenia. Meanwhile, Trieste became an independent city in 1947. Its territory was divided into the A Zone (north) and the
B Zone (south). In 1954, the B Zone was annexed to Yugoslavia. Slovenia received part of it. On 1991-10-08, Slovenia declared
independence from Yugoslavia.

Postal codes:

Further subdivisions:

It appears that after Slovenia became independent in 1991, it had 62 opčine (communes, although the CIA World Factbook described
them as pokrajine [provinces]). The number of communes grew to 146 in 1995, and 210 in 2006. There are also several sets of higher-level
divisions, which are defined as groups of communes. I felt that over 200 divisions was too long a listing for such a small country,
especially since the communes change fairly often. I chose a set of divisions which seem to be in current use, although they may not have
a legal basis. There is another set of 58 divisions, intermediate between the statistical regions and the communes, called upravne enote
(administrative units).

New proposed NUTS codes for Slovenia were issued on 2004-09-15. They all began with SI00. I don't know whether they were ever
actually used. The NUTS codes in effect as of 2007-02 are shown here. There are also two "cohesion regions": Vzhodna Slovenija (East
Slovenia, SI01) and Zahodna Slovenija (West Slovenia, SI02). The first four characters of the NUTS code for a
statistical region show which cohesion region it belongs to.

Change history:

1920-07-16: Treaty of Saint-Germain took effect. Most of Coastland province annexed to Venezia region of Italy. Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes created.

1946: Yugoslavia organized as federal republic, with Slovenia as one of its constituent republics.

1947-02-10: Peace treaty signed. Trieste and a surrounding area were made into the Free Territory of Trieste. The rest of Venezia
Giulia e Zara region transferred from Italy to Yugoslavia.

1954: Yugoslavia received Zone B of Trieste, part of which (including the port cities of Izola, Koper, and Piran) merged with
Slovenia republic. During the 1950s and early '60s, Slovenia was divided into the following counties (population is 1959 estimate):

County

population

Area(km.²)

Celje

197,000

2,314

Gorica

113,000

2,324

Koper

106,000

2,031

Kranj

135,000

2,132

Ljubljana

389,000

4,339

Maribor

345,000

3,208

Murska Sobota

133,000

1,336

Novo Mesto

159,000

2,567

8 counties

1,577,000

20,251

1995-01-01: Slovenia reorganized. The 62 communes were replaced with 146 communes. The latest FIPS list available shows these
communes.

1998-03-20: Referendum created 37 new communes.

~1997: two administrative units (Kočevje and Ribnica) were transferred from Osrednjeslovenska region to Dolenjska region.

[5] "Ershiyi (21) Shiji Shijie Diming Lu". Beijing, 2001. This Chinese gazetteer gives the areas of the 147 communes as of 1997. I
added the areas of the communes in each region to get region totals.

[6] Pecar, Janja: "Regional Aspect of Slovenias Development Based on Financial Results of Commercial Companies in 1997", IMAD,
December 1998. Found at http://193.2.236.10/meor/ang/regional/pdf/an-pdrp.pdf (retrieved 2001-04-14, now a dead link). Most of the areas
from sources [5] and [6] are in pretty close agreement. However, Dolenjska and Osrednjeslovenska are exceptions. According to [5], their
areas are 2,774 and 2,466 km.², respectively. [6] puts them at 1,684 and 3,546 km.², respectively. On a map, they appear to be
about the same size. On those grounds, the areas from [5] are probably more accurate.

[8] The Government Communication Office of Slovenia said that the legislature was considering proposals to divide the country into
fourteen provinces. (http://www.ukom.gov.si/eng/slovenia/publications/slovenia-news/4479/4482/: dead link, retrieved 2007-03-13).